I’m finally back in Japan and ready to get back into the swing of Frontale things again. It’s a shame I missed this game, and I well and truly missed it, as I got on the plane just as it kicked off. It was a pleasant surprise when I finally saw the result though. Certainly, it was a important win, a real six pointer. If only we’d beaten Tosu, we’d now be in a really good position, being able to go top with a good result in our game in hand. [Hmmm, slight problem with my maths here, should add an almost before the word top in that sentence]. But I guess life is full of what ifs. Hopefully this will have put a hefty boot in Hiroshima’s confidence. They’ve been stuttering and this was the game they really needed to not lose. But lose it they did, and with FC Tokyo stumbling again, it could be developing into a two horse race at the top, which is very welcome, as before the World Cup break it looked like a one horse race with a three or four horse race for second place. The league is certainly very open this year, but we seem to be finding some consistency recently.
Next up we have Shonan at home in the Emperor’s Cup on Wednesday and then Sendai at home in the league on Saturday. It will soon feel like I was never away. Go Frontale!
The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.
Another missed game for me, and once again I watched it on the internet, this time on a slightly larger screen, but with worse picture quality. Presumably the presence of Torres contributed to the fact that the game was a sellout, but then again, our home games have been getting pretty big crowds recently anyway. You’ve got to look at this result as a huge missed opportunity. Sanfrecce drew and we fluffed the chance to claw back some ground on them. We totally dominated the game but couldn’t score. We do tend to struggle against Tosu, but we really should have put the ball in the net at some stage given the amount of chances we had. If we come close in the league this year, we’ll have to look back on this one as a major stumble. Poor Manabu missed a real sitter, but I don’t want to point the finger at anyone in particular as there were plenty of other missed shots and plenty of shots that could have been mistaken for back passes. Torres apparently said we were the best team he’s played in Japan, but that doesn’t exactly help us make up points on Sanfrecce. All this adds to the significance of this weekend's game away to Sanfrecce which will now either really ramp up the title race excitement or more or less spell the end of our challenge. Sure it’s still relatively early in the season but there’s only so many chances to catch them that were going to get and we can't keep fluffing our lines.
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for IENAGA 88')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 81')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 81')
Goals None
Highlights The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.
Another game I couldn’t go to, but at least this time I was able to watch it on a tiny screen on a betting site and double the excitement by betting on the race to nine corners (which no one won...). It was the same starters and subs again and not the most exciting of games to be honest. I’m a bit worried how early we shut up shop after taking the lead. I’m sure it’s going to come back and bite us at some stage but thankfully it didn’t today. Was nice to see Oshima back on the scoresheet after a long time. The goal we conceded came from a stinker of a pass from Kurumaya who still seems to be way off form. I don’t want to point the finger at him too much though as he’s a left back playing at centre back. He’s not as good in the air as you’d expect a centre back to be and this negatively impacts us in both boxes. Although this mistake was nothing to do with that. Hopefully next game he can be played in a position that he’s better suited to. But yeah, all in all another win, which is crucial, even if it wasn’t the most thrilling or convincing of wins. Team
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (on for KOBAYASHI 90+3') MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 76')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (Yellow card 84') (on for ABE 77')
Goals
DOUGLAS (Shimizu) 5' 1-0 KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 32’ 1-1 OSHIMA (Frontale) 64' 1-2 Highlights The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.
I’ve barely managed to get this post out before the next game and as I wasn’t able to see any of the match due to my summer holiday, I’m not going to say too much about it. I’m going to miss a few games actually, but hopefully will be able to at least watch some of them on DAZN. (I've now deleted the part where I moaned about Nara not playing as apparently he's injured. Wish they'd make the injury situation a bit clearer. It would stop me moaning about Oniki and stop me making a fool of myself!)
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota (Yellow card 53’)
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa (Yellow card 64')
MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki
Subs
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto (on for ELSINHO 72')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for NAKAMURA 77')
DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ABE 85')
Goals
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 34’ 1-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 71' 2-0
Highlights The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.
I’m banging this blog post out quickly for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don’t want to ever think about this awful game again if I can help it. Also, I’m going on holiday on Friday so can’t do my usual procrastination (in other words, delay writing it endlessly due to being both busy and lazy). This game came the day after my birthday and I was hoping for a massive victory against a nasty team late birthday present. Sadly, it was more a kick in the guts to remind me that I’m getting old and life is often a bit crap. I’m not going to go into detail as I can’t be bothered. Instead, I’ll break it down into a series of bullet pointed moans. Here we go.
- This was almost a copy of last year’s Levain Cup final in the same stadium. Error gives them an early goal, which was pretty much their only shot for most of the game. We huff and puff and never manage to score due to a combination of them having eleven men behind the ball and rotten finishing from us. And then they grab a breakaway goal near the end as we sling players forward. Sure, it was against a different team, but it was very much a familiar story.
- Urawa have gone from being a team who tried to play some nice football to a kind of 'this season’s classic J League team'/Brazil 2018 World Cup hybrid. Defending in numbers and occasionally hitting on the counter attack whilst taking every opportunity to roll around on the floor feigning injury. There was a ridiculous amount of time wasting in this game. Urawa did a job on us. We again couldn’t deal with it.
- DAZN seemed to know the Urawa line up and formation whilst Oniki only seemed to spot it around the 70th minute. Our lone striker was totally isolated up front against three centre backs. When we finally put two up front with Chinen on, we started creating a few better chances. But some horrible finishing from a lot of off-form players meant we were destined to end up goalless. I’ve no idea why we left it so late to try to put a bit more pressure on their defence by giving the rest of the team a couple of options to pass to, instead of trying to get it to Kobayashi who seemed a lot smaller than the three centre backs.
- There were a lot of anonymous performances, Kengo, Ienaga, Hasegawa. Kobayashi missed a lot of good chances. Morita had a bit of a dodgy game. Kurumaya seems to have lost the ability to play football since he had the one storming game after not being selected for the World Cup squad. Taniguchi had a bit of a nightmare, particularly for the first goal. The penalty was a catalogue of disasters with blunder after blunder from numerous players. The player who created the most chances was probably Nara with his through balls. I love Nara, but that’s not really how we’re supposed to be playing. Suzuki really made a difference when he came on, and then Oniki moved him to right back with ten minutes to go. Elsinho didn’t look very happy when he was taken off and who can blame him. Manabu made a great run as soon as he came on and then hardly got the ball afterwards. Can’t help but feel something is very wrong behind the scenes at the moment.
This is the kind of result we’ve been building towards really. I can’t believe we got four wins in a row before this. The only half decent performance was Sapporo away and even there we still didn’t take full advantage of a lot of good chances. Every team in the league is strengthening their squad at the moment and we are weakening ours. We’re totally inflexible and in danger of really being found out, particularly if we get a few injuries. I’ve probably made my feelings fairly clear on the matter, but Oniki isn’t helping us, he’s hindering us. I can’t help but feel that we’d be doing a lot better without him. Think I am probably in the minority in thinking this though. But things are looking pretty bleak. Yeah, plenty of players didn’t play well, but they are following the instructions of a manager who has only one idea, and right now, it’s not a good one.
Next up, my holiday and a blessed break from having to watch this rubbish. For the team, the easy task of a local derby against Yokohama at Todoroki on Sunday. Even though they’ve generally been pretty dreadful aside from one game, you can almost guarantee that they have that one good game of the month against us. Go Frontale? Actually, (I may have used this line already, but please allow me to use it again), Go Oniki! Go away, please!
Team
GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG
DF 18. ELSINHO
DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 87')
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki
DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro
MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota
MF 25. MORITA Hidemasa
MF 41. IENAGA Akihiro
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu
Subs GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei(on for NAKAMURA70')
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto(on for HASEGAWA57')
MF 37. SAITO Manabu (on for ELSINHO78')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
No.
Goals
KOROKI (Urawa) 67' 1-0
FABRICIO (Urawa) 90+3' (PEN) 2-0
Highlights
The
Frontale youtube channel usually has
longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's
highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to
stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer
highlights here if you want.
Back to Todoroki and it was a pretty much full house on a sweltering hot day for the visit of V-Varen Nagasaki. Once again, an interesting team name. Perhaps it’s a sign that I have become too comfortable with the J League that recently I rarely find myself being intrigued by the origins of the multitude of intriguing names around. I’ve checked this one though and am pleased to report it’s a mixture of Portuguese and Dutch with the first V standing for two different words in two different languages. Lovely! Understandably given the distance and the fact that this was another Sunday night game, there weren’t a great deal of Nagasaki fans in attendance but fair play to the ones who made it. This was the first home game after the World Cup break and the stadium was actually pretty loud. I guess people have missed their dose of Frontale. Some of us have been to two games in the last week and a half though! In charge was the reliably poor (in my opinion), Nishimura. Fantastic... He wasn’t as bad as he’s been in the past but I still get the impression that he thinks he’s the star attraction and perhaps wilfully makes some strange decisions to draw attention to himself.
The team was unchanged from Wednesday’s game in Sapporo. The bench was almost the same, with the one change being Takeoka taking the place of Michael James, Oniki presumably thinking that it’s better to have two full backs who can be drafted in to have a go in central defence if required than someone who job it is to play that position. Once again, no sign of Moriya or Saito. The game started with Nagasaki really getting in our faces, pressuring us on the ball, particularly in defence. But we were dealing with the pressure pretty well. It was however stifling our attacks. We’d spend ages getting the ball out from the back and then run aground in midfield, being unable to penetrate a ten man Nagasaki defence. We still have trouble playing against teams that defend in numbers against us and with these kind of counter attacking tactics popular this year, we really should have worked something out by now. Nagasaki were playing with two big lumps up front and whilst we contained them, we had a few nervy moments. Juanma seemed to be really one-footed, which probably helped us a lot. It certainly reduced their options. At this point in my notes I have the phrase ‘Nishimura clown’. Can’t remember what in particular it was about, but I think the thought stands up by itself. The one thing missing from both teams play was a final ball. We’d finally reach the danger zone after a lot of sideways passing and try just one more pass instead of having a shot. Taking of which, Oshima never seems to shoot anymore. He used to score some crackers. Wish he’d start doing that again. Perhaps this is also something Moriya brings to our game. He really loves to have a long range shot. It would be good to have that option. The highlight of the first half for me was a couple of perfect almost prone passes Ienaga made after being wrestled to the floor. He seems to be providing me with some special enjoyment every week at the moment. Great stuff! We’d dominated possession as you might expect and had a few shots but hadn’t quite found either our groove or range.
For the second half, we seemed to come out with more purpose. Nagasaki were still content to try to keep the score even and try to snatch a goal on the break, but we shifted up a couple of gears. Unfortunately we still weren’t getting very lucky with our finishing. Elsinho had a nice chance with a header at the back post, but the ball seemed to really change direction after it bounced. We took the lead through Kobayashi who put the ball away at the second time of asking. The first shot was straight at the keeper who parried the ball back to Kobayashi. The second shot was perhaps unnecessarily uncompromising, into the roof of the net with quite some power. It was pretty exciting to see the ball smashed home. Thankfully it went in! You would imagine that us going ahead would mean that the game really opened up and we’d have some more decent chances due to Nagasaki having to commit some more bodies forward. Whilst the latter happened, the former didn’t. We had some chances but looked much more nervy than we had before the goal. For quite some time at the end of the game we were hanging on, with plenty of players back, even indulging in a bit of time wasting if I’m honest. It wasn’t the most edifying of sights. Whilst I don’t want us to be completely Kazama-style gung-ho, it would be nice if we weren’t trying to shut up shop at 1-0, what with us being defending champions playing a team that was promoted last year who are sitting in the bottom half of the table. 1-0 is a bit too dangerous a score and we could easily have conceded an equaliser and then would have probably struggled to go back ahead again. Somewhat interestingly, the substitutions in this game were identical to the last game, so perhaps now we not only have our first eleven set in stone, but also the changes. Nagasaki had the lion’s share of the possession in the second half but we hung on and took the three points. It was nothing like a confident and exciting performance, but with Neto and Nagoya holding Hiroshima to a 0-0 draw, it was a crucial win, reducing the gap to eight points. I guess I’d have to say that I’d take a repeat of these results for a few weeks if it meant that things got a bit closer up at the top of the table.
Positives and negatives. Positives first. Probably the big one is the combination of us winning and the Hiroshima result narrowing the gap. A step in the right direction. Kobayashi's goal was enjoyable and it’s good to see him keep knocking them in. There weren’t really any stand out performances though, either for positive or negative reasons. On to negatives. This was a pretty uninspiring performance. Not bad, just not really there. We looked worse after we scored which is a bit weird. We are still pretty inflexible with the same players starting every game and the same tactics being employed whatever the situation and now even the same subs being made. Sure, we're the reigning champions so maybe we should be forcing other teams to adapt to our way of playing. But the thing is, plenty of them have, and it’s causing us a few headaches. This year may be the year of defending in numbers and snatching long ball goals on the counter attack. We might not like that, but we do need to work out how to combat it and I still don’t think we know. We’re picking up wins and long may that continue, (four in a row in the league, so what am I moaning about?!), but other teams are blasting in goals left right and centre and we’re scraping victories by the odd goal and hanging on with some time wasting. We may soon have to give up our moral high ground. Sure we pass the ball around very nicely but we’re not exactly dazzling. In fact it’s more like someone turned down the dimmer switch to the minimum at the moment. Hopefully, even if we can’t dazzle we can at least glow a little soon.
Next up, Shonan Bellmare away on Saturday. Apparently a typhoon is coming so that makes pretty much every aspect of the match day a challenge. They’re another team in the bottom half, but one which has just hammered Vissel Iniesta (as I believe they are now called). It’s a local derby too, so perhaps that can stir us into life a little. Go Frontale!
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei (on for NAKAMURA 85')
MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
DF 17. TAKEOKA Yuto
FW 20. CHINEN Kei (Yellow card 90+3') (on for KOBAYASHI 90')
MF 22. SHIMODA Hokuto
MF 27. SUZUKI Yuto (on for ABE 74')
My Frontale Man Of The Match
Like I said, not a great deal of stand-out performances in this game. For the sake of giving it to someone, I'll give it to the person who I never really notice, but seems to always get on with doing his thing very well.
OSHIMA Ryota - why not, eh?
Goals
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 67' 1-0
Highlights
The Frontale youtube channel usually has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want. And we have that extra footage video again at the bottom.
We’re only one game back into the restarted season and I’m already running the risk of not getting a blog post done before the following match. The schedule this year is pretty hectic. Presumably that’s why we decided to crash out of the ACL early. Must be, right? It was good to get back into league action though. Particularly after last week's disappointing cup game against Mito. The team selection for our league games will always be more representative of what Oniki considers to be our best team, so now we have a bit more idea of how our midfield will look post-Neto. I guess it will come as no surprise that Morita will be taking his place. Thankfully, my hero Nara was back where he belongs, alongside Taniguchi, for his return to his old hometown team. Any line-up surprises were probably on the bench. I’m pleased that Oniki actually put a replacement centre back on there this time. It now seems that Michael James is his preferred third choice. The writing is probably on the wall for Edu, who I think has been unfairly blamed by Oniki in the past at times, but seems to suffer from making one big and sometimes costly mistake per match. He looks destined to spend the rest of the season playing for the reserves. I’m not sure an injury would even get him back into the squad. The other big surprise was the absence of Moriya. Shimoda was the bench replacement for that position. But at least this time the bench made a bit more sense than at Mito.
It’s always nice to go to Sapporo and this time we got to go to their second stadium, which I think I enjoyed more than the Sapporo dome. It’s interesting to watch a game inside in a baseball stadium, but given that this was summer, and the weather was much nicer than in boiling hot Kanto, it was great to be outside. Of course there was a running track though, and the pitch seemed to be even further away than usual. Given the slightly limited viewpoint, the lateness of this blogpost and the Sapporo Classic on tap at the stadium, the details in this post may be lacking somewhat. But I guess you can watch a video of the game if you’re into details and that kind of thing. You probably come to this blog just for the moaning, right? You may be disappointed with this post though, as I had a fun time and consequently haven’t got too many moans this time. The game was pretty exciting and was quite open from the start with chances for both teams. We were defending well though, with the two centre backs and the keeper doing a good job of keeping Sapporo at bay. Morita was also doing well (I still miss Neto though...) and it was nice to see Oshima back on the pitch. Morita did pick up an early yellow card though. It looked a bit harsh from where I was but to be honest I couldn’t see much. The weird thing is, they were showing a lot of replays on the big screen in the stadium. These replays clearly, and amusingly, showed up bad decisions from the referee on several occasions. This time the ref was Iemoto, who has been decent for us this year. I’m not sure I’d say he had a good game, and apparently both sets of fans thought he’d favoured the other team, but we did win again with him in charge, so I’m not going to complain. We were moving the ball around quite nicely but occasionally over complicating things up front and over playing it in the middle and almost getting caught out at the back at times. The Consadole fans were annoyingly booing all our possession. I’m not sure what effect this kind of thing is supposed to have. It annoys me, but I’d imagine it probably makes the team in possession enjoy the possession all the more. We managed to put a stop to this booing and go into halftime a goal to the good though. I’ve seen the goal referred to as a PlayStation style goal and I think that sums it up quite nicely. Elsinho got the ball on the right and dribbled infield past player after player towards the box before his shot squeezed in under keeper. The keeper probably could have gone a better job of stopping it, but I’m glad he didn’t. So a decent first half, with chances for both teams, a high percentage of which were on target for us. Promising!
Sadly, half time brought the realisation that Sanfrecce were winning comfortably against Gamba who’d received an early red card. And also our local rivals Yokohama were destroying our friends Vegalta Sendai. Not the best first half scores from the other matches to be honest. Someone has to stop Hiroshima soon. Let’s hope it’s Neto at Nagoya this weekend. Statistically the second half was quite similar to the first. A decent amount of chances for both teams with us having the edge in terms of possession. We scored again early on into the second half and it was through Kobayashi, who looked pretty good throughout the game. It was a nice move and a great finish, cutting back, losing the defenders and curling the ball into the corner. This meant that Consadole really had to start doing something and they gave it a decent crack. Most of their attacks seemed to be coming down their left, with Jay being a constant menace in the box. The ref was making some slightly bizarre decisions and there was a possibility that they could have had a penalty in the first half. The ref didn’t give it though (excellent decision, I’m sure...). Iemoto seemed to perhaps think he’d got that decision wrong, (probably saw the replay on the screen), and for the whole of the second half gave them pretty much everything to try to even things up. They had to get a goal to get back into the game and this opened things up for us to pour forward at times. Ienaga had a couple of lovely chances that he was unlucky with. He was really putting in a shift though and again showing how important he is for us this year. Oniki made a couple of changes, Nobori on for Kengo (!?), Ienaga moving into the Kengo spot and Abe and Nobori changing wings a couple of times (I think... or perhaps it was just a bit of a confusing mess). Five minutes later he brought on Suzuki for Abe, who’d just missed a glorious chance to put us three up, sliding to meet a cross and putting it just wide. Now Nobori could stick to the left and Suzuki could go on the right. I don’t know why Oniki didn’t make the two changes at the same time. Perhaps he was expecting the first change to do the business, or perhaps he wanted to run down the clock a little. To be honest, we did almost score during this spell, so perhaps he’s a tactical genius! The removal of Kengo meant that Ienaga was now on the corners and I really really enjoyed the contrast between his fatigue defying lung busting bursts up the pitch to shoot just wide, with the utter exhaustion displayed when he had to go to take a corner, tiny steps, head hung low, legs wobbling like he’s just finished a marathon. Great stuff! And will probably be just as good an Ienaga image as his shoulder flick at Yuma Suzuki, which was well worth him getting a yellow card for. We looked to be seeing the game out without too many worries when they got a free kick on the edge of the box from a Nara handball. Felt a little harsh to me as he was jumping and turning at the time, but I understand why it was given. Sadly they scored from the set piece, (with a tiny hint of offside although I haven’t checked it), and we were unable to take away a clean sheet from the game. A shame as we’d defended pretty solidly for the most part, and Sung-Ryong seemed back to his old self. We’d probably brought the five minutes injury time on ourselves, and we really shouldn’t have played on much further after their goal. I didnt need the couple of nervous minutes that were played. But we saw them out in spite of an early start to our victory song and a few heart in the mount moments, and took home the three points. Lovely!
Positives and negatives. Not so much in the way of negatives this time. It was a good result against a decent team. Perhaps the other J League results are the negative. Big positives were the defensive solidity for the most part of the game and Sung-Ryong being on hand when the defence was breached. Kobayashi seemed a lot livelier than he was against Mito and took his goal well. Hopefully he can get a run of goals going. Nice dribbling from Elsinho too! And another big positive were the Consadole fans, (aside from the booing...). They were very helpful after the game when we were debating how to get back into town. One even offered to share a cab with us. If you’re reading this, see you at Todoroki!
Next up we have Nagasaki at home tomorrow in the league. After that we’re away at Shonan the following Saturday. So, a couple of teams towards the bottom of the table. We normally struggle in these games, but we can’t afford to drop any points right now. Fingers crossed for six points from these games and a big ZERO points for Hiroshima against Nagoya and Urawa. Go Frontale!
Tricky one, given that there were a lot of decent performances, particularly at the back. For the fact that it looks like he's coming back into form and the well taken goal, I think I'll give it to...
KOBAYASHI Yu - worked hard, made chances and scored a cracker
Goals
ELSINHO (Frontale) 42' 0-1
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 52' 0-2
TOKURA (Consadole) 90+5' 1-2
Highlights
The
Frontale youtube channel usually has
longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that a previous year's
highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to
stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer
highlights here if you want.
